Not to get too far off topic, but I always found the art in the Where's Waldo series to be as engaging and alive as anything else - whomever illustrated them(don't have one on-hand to check) did a great job of creating very close likenesses of social interaction and human characteristics. That is, there are very, very few figures which appear stiff or out of place in the books.

Obvously, the Waldo illustrator was inspired by Altdorfer, and that kind of thing.

Keeping the high tone of this blog, I liked seeing a complicated painting by Durer (those kings and nobles liked those elaborate pictures of their triumphs!), and finding the figure of the artist looking directly at me, the viewer, from the lower right-hand corner. Like we were sharing a joke across the centuries.

Thank you, li-an. I love these pictures and ideas so much, I have to resist the temptation to prattle on too long, belaboring the obvious. A post should rise on its own, as light as a souffle. Mine tend to sink like a stone under the weight of too much prose.

On those rare occasions when I exercise restraint, I am always intrigued by how readers fill in the blanks. For example, I never thought that Brueghel would end up with "Where's Waldo?"